In last night’s US and UK posts I shared my latest thoughts on the next 3-6 weeks with a cooler than normal pattern likely to continue into June for both the UK and eastern US, however I have been wanting to share some early thoughts on next winter with you for a while.

Despite being many months away and have yet to enter meteorological summer, for me it’s important to start looking at next winter now, just as the summer pattern is evolving. The seeds are NOW being sown and what the atmosphere shows us through summer, can be a hint to an approaching winter.

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The current and evolving ENSO pattern, SST temperatures, solar activity and the NAO/AO trend all tell a story and bring hints. Trend and the way a pattern evolves can have high significance further down the road.

Initial aspects I’m looking at…

1) Current ENSO state and potential return of a La Nina in late summer into autumn

2) SST temperatures over the North Atlantic. The current warm AMO and the fact that models see the tripole of warm-cold-warm, favour high latitude blocking

3) Low solar activity also supports blocking as well as a stronger cold pool.

4) The summer trend of the NAO/AO will also play a significant role.

Given that solar activity is low and set to get even lower through the rest of this year, suggests cold will build easily over the northern world and may remain stronger than normal throughout this summer over the arctic compared to recent years. The cold spring we’re seeing may well play a big role in far less sea ice melting this year. Combine the low solar activity and the North Atlantic tripole seen to exist into next winter according to the long range models, point to a very favourable environment for winter blocking which suggests the Arctic Oscillation is likely to be mainly negative and more often than not, when the AO is negative, so too is the NAO.

As it stands, I beleive we have the potential for a severe winter on the way and one that may push the boundaries. Winter 2009-10 was nasty and with the ‘hunch’ I have right now, next winter may be another nasty one, worse than this past winter and more on par with 2009-10 given the factors I have mentioned above!

Below is the Jamstec SST forecast for next winter.

It’s still very early, so don’t read into this too much but here’s the 2 metre temperature forecast for the December through February 2013-14 according to the Jamstec model.

Notice it has a warm winter across the central and eastern US with cold in the West. That’s a strong la nina look in my opinion. It has the UK colder than normal but much of Europe is warm.

I dissagree with it’s warm look over eastern North America but the cold look over the UK but I would like to see it colder in the eastern US as well as the UK and that’s because of the potential favorability of blocking. In saying that, right now, just as it may not be warm in the Eastern US, it may equally not be cold in the UK. Like all models whether is medium or long range, they will chop and change with time.

The CFSv2 no real guidance in temperatures over both North America as well as Europe but it does show the North Atlantic tripole favouring blocking, similar to the Jamstec which is interesting.

Here’s the predicted SST’s from autumn into early winter according to the CFSv2.

This of course is not a forecast but thoughts on what I’m looking at just now.

Will share more thoughts on the winter sometime in June or July.

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Tags: UK winter thoughts 2013-14, USA winter forecast 2013-14, Winter forecast 2013-14